Near his hometown of Nottingham, the collect-o-maniac designer Paul Smith keeps several warehouses' worth of archives—to which he recently took his young London-based design team for a browse. "And they all got so excited," said Smith. "The danger is that as you get older as a person and a company, you get history, you think, 'Oh, I've done that'—forgetting that the 19- to 30-year-olds haven't seen it."

The upshot was this collection: a measured romp through 1970s sources that didn't feel defined by that decade. Yes, the finale fur coats were reminiscent of those Sir Paul saw Deep Purple perform in at a student bar in the ’70s—but they'd be just as impactful today on a rapper. Even that defining 1970s meme, the flare, didn't seem entirely out of time here—high-rised and with just the slimmest of taper, it kind of worked. The square over-checking on suits and pumped-silhouette down coats, as well as the triangular decorations on jewelry and knitwear, hailed from the work of Josef and Anni Albers—although with Toots and the Maytals on the sound system that check seemed touched by the Specials.

Smith said: "The skill of being a designer is to have a very childlike outlook on life. Like Picasso said, even as he got older he tried to have the eyes of a child and to paint with freedom." The young design team with which Smith has surrounded himself is empowering him to consider his history without becoming mired in the past—and to produce clothes that feel relevant to the present.